Show captionThe proposed bylaw changes being protested at the Melbourne City council meeting would also see police given more powers to move on rough sleepers if they refused to accept offers of short-term housing and access to social services. Photograph: Melissa Davey/The Guardian

About two dozen protesters gathered outside Melbourne’s Town Hall on Tuesday night ahead of a volatile council meeting to discuss homelessness and proposed changes to council laws that would see the belongings of homeless people removed from the streets.

The meeting of the Melbourne City Council’s future committee was moved from its usual location to accommodate a crowd of about 250 people. On the agenda was a proposal to open public consultation on a new public amenity law.

If introduced, the law would make it illegal to leave items unattended in a public place. Council workers routinely remove 100kg to 150kg of belongings from homeless camps and send them to landfill each week, the council heard.

The proposed bylaw changes would also see police given more powers to move on rough sleepers if they refused to accept offers of short-term housing and access to social services.

As the meeting opened, a contingent of police stood at the back of the room. A man who described himself as mentally ill and homeless addressed meeting chair Councillor Arron Wood, the lord mayor Robert Doyle and the other councillors, describing the impact the confiscation of his belongings had on him.

“I’ve been homeless since I was 14,” he said. “The police stole everything I owned. They stole my medication, my wallet, everything. This was because Starbucks complained about mess in front of their business.”

Wood thanked the man for his submission, to which the man replied: “It’s not just a submission mate it’s a fact.”

“If you want a riot, we will give you a fucking riot,” he continued. “This is Melbourne. Fuck you.”

Outside the meeting, protesters held up signs that read “Shit sign for a shit mayor” and “No more bandaids and bans”. A woman representing the group Freedom from Poverty, Kate Hamley, addressed a small crowd that gathered, saying the bylaws “would effectively make homelessness illegal in the community”.

The proposed laws led some homeless people and their advocates to say that the council was moving to ban homelessness. Removing swags and blankets from the streets and a proposed change to the definition of camping would effectively outlaw homelessness, they argued to the council.

Doyle has said there was no plan to criminalise homelessness, and that homelessness was not illegal.

Homeless people, social workers and their representatives addressed Doyle and the councillors, arguing the proposed laws would do just that, to the applause of the meeting attendees.

One man, who said he had a lived experience of homelessness, told the councillors that: “The current proposed legislation will not be a solution but simply move the problem elsewhere.”

“We could create a new way of dealing with people facing homeless … and deal humanely with the homeless,” he told the council.

“The legislation as it’s proposed simply puts another burden on people going through crisis in their lives.”

Council should look at installing lockers and safe spaces as alternatives to removing belongings, he said, adding: “we can’t afford to push people to the edge”.

The CEO of Urban Seed, David Wilson, a former Melbourne City councillor, told the councillors: “I sat where you’re sitting a number of years ago during the Commonwealth Games when there was a concern about homelessness and suggestions of ridding the streets of rough sleepers”.

“The City of Melbourne stood up against that on human rights grounds,” Wilson said.

He urged councillors to consider the issue of homelessness “from the same human rights perspective”.

Kate Colvin, a policy manager for the Council to Homeless Persons, said changing the definition of camping and removing people’s belongings would cause considerable harm.

“This is taking away basic rights people have,” she said. “Effectively, we feel it’s saying to people that they shouldn’t exist.”

It would increase the likelihood of homeless people coming into contact with justice system, she added.

“Whatever you might think it will achieve, please keep in mind it will have an appalling cost to people who are already vulnerable,” she said.

The chair Law Institute of Victoria’s human rights committee said police already had substantial powers and did not need to have them strengthened in order to move homeless people on.

The right not to have a person’s privacy or home interfered with was embedded in law, he added.

“Melbourne should not be a city that pushes out homeless people, depriving them of access to services and impacting their safety,” he said.

After hearing the speakers, Wood said the issue was not easy for anyone involved.“We’ve had a doubling of rough sleepers in the city of Melbourne over the past couple of years,” Doyle said.

“In response we’ve doubled our homelessness budget to $3.5m. I think the interest in this issue in the long run is going to be helpful.”

The recommended amendments being proposed formed just a small part of the council’s homelessness strategy, Doyle told attendees, adding that council was only suggesting putting the proposed changes to public consultation and review.

“No one organisation can solve it, not the city of Melbourne, not the state government, not the federal government, no one provider,” he said.

“Thinking logically and objectively,” services needed to be coordinate to address the issue, he said.

He added an additional proposal that would require service providers attend when police removed homeless people on.

“This is not about arresting homeless people, this is about getting them onto pathways towards mental health and housing,” he said.

But he was shouted at by a group of the meeting attendees, who yelled out “where’s the houses?” and “bullshit”.

Doyle responded that the “federal government is completely missing from this issue”. He agreed that lockers, safe spaces and drop-in centres proposed by the speakers should all be considered by the council.

As councillors discussed the proposed bylaws, the attendees yelled out “your language is violent” and heckled.

One councillor, Rohan Leppert, moved to strike out the proposal to broaden the definition of camping in public places, saying it could lead to pieces of cardboard and blankets being removed. But his amendment failed to pass.

Despite Leppert and two other councillors speaking against the motion to open the proposed bylaw changes to public consultation, the council passed it.

The public will have 28 days to submit arguments for or against the proposed laws. Attendees left the meeting chanting “homelessness is not a crime” and “shame Doyle, shame”.